Spawning

It was Christmas cancer: a volleyball in the womb. Mary was already going through menopause and now the doctors were going to remove all of her “girl parts,” as she told my wife, Beatrice.

“Oh Mom.” The faux-silence of the phone’s empty buzz could not hide the vacuum of holiday merriment.

And while the growth was removed from my mother-in-law’s belly, Beatrice and I argued about creating a child of our own.

“We should have a baby sooner. I really want mom around to help raise the kids.”

“Gosh, B, I don’t know.” How could I put this without upsetting her? “Mary’s cancer does not entitle her to grand-children.”

B wept and sought comfort in the arms of a man who was not ready to have her children. I craved for things a dad shouldn’t own: a big screen TV, a motorcycle, a gun.

My father never owned any of these things, as he was young, enlisted and with children. But he prized his fishing poles.

• * * *

“Bigger rivers have alot of water for the fish to travel in and finding their travel routes is the key to consistently finding fish. Salmon travel in very distinct lanes and at certain depths, near river bottom structures, and in certain types of current and so on. When these salmon get upriver, away from the saltwater for a period of time, their feeding habits change and they are more keyed into there upstream migration than they are into feeding. Its for this reason that location is the key to your salmon fishing success.

“You have to place your bait in front of the salmon. You want to irritate it into biting. The Spring Chinook salmon still actively feed while migrating upstream but there Fall Chinook cousins usually will hit a lure or bait out of a reaction strike and not a feeding impulse. The reason for this is that the spring salmon enter the river in late winter or early spring and don’t spawn until late summer or fall so they continue to eat until they spawn. The fall salmon enter Oregon and Washington rivers beginning in late summer and usually spawn shortly after reaching their spawning areas this process can take as little as a couple of weeks.”

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